The bulk of [Frost's] poetry is a dialogue in which the two speakers are Robert Frost himself and the entity which we call nature or process. It is a dialogue in which Frost puts a variety of questions to the natural world that lies just beyond his doorstep and receives a variety of answers. They are answers that an ethically curious person like Frost can profit by. Whether he—and we—are meant to profit by them, whether the replies and the chance instructions that come to man from nature are fortuitous blows or carefully planted clues: this is not always important to Frost. That man may well find his relevancies in the irrelevancies of process is a possibility that does not often disturb Frost.

But … this peaceful dialogue between Frost and nature—this peaceful flow of New England information from snow-crust to sheet of paper—has of...